Finding a Real Fix to Our Problems

1 Samuel said to all Israel, “I have listened to everything you said to me and have set a king over you. 2 Now you have a king as your leader. 6 Then Samuel said to the people, “It is the LORD who appointed Moses and Aaron and brought your ancestors up out of Egypt. 7 Now then, stand here, because I am going to confront you with evidence before the LORD as to all the righteous acts performed by the LORD for you and your ancestors. 8 “After Jacob entered Egypt, they cried to the LORD for help, and the LORD sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your ancestors out of Egypt and settled them in this place. 9 “But they forgot the LORD their God; so he sold them into the hand of Sisera, the commander of the army of Hazor, and into the hands of the Philistines and the king of Moab, who fought against them. 10 They cried out to the LORD and said, ‘We have sinned; we have forsaken the LORD and served the Baals and the Ashtoreths. But now deliver us from the hands of our enemies, and we will serve you.’ 11 Then the LORD sent Jerub-Baal, Barak, Jephthah and Samuel, and he delivered you from the hands of your enemies all around you, so that you lived in safety. 12 “But when you saw that Nahash king of the Ammonites was moving against you, you said to me, ‘No, we want a king to rule over us’—even though the LORD your God was your king. 13 Now here is the king you have chosen, the one you asked for; see, the LORD has set a king over you. 14 If you fear the LORD and serve and obey him and do not rebel against his commands, and if both you and the king who reigns over you follow the LORD your God—good! 15 But if you do not obey the LORD, and if you rebel against his commands, his hand will be against you, as it was against your ancestors. 16 “Now then, stand still and see this great thing the LORD is about to do before your eyes! 17 Is it not wheat harvest now? I will call on the LORD to send thunder and rain. And you will realize what an evil thing you did in the eyes of the LORD when you asked for a king.” 18 Then Samuel called on the LORD, and that same day the LORD sent thunder and rain. So all the people stood in awe of the LORD and of Samuel. 19 The people all said to Samuel, “Pray to the LORD your God for your servants so that we will not die, for we have added to all our other sins the evil of asking for a king.” 20 “Do not be afraid,” Samuel replied. “You have done all this evil; yet do not turn away from the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart. 21 Do not turn away after useless idols. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are useless. 22 For the sake of his great name the LORD will not reject his people, because the LORD was pleased to make you his own. 23 As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by failing to pray for you. And I will teach you the way that is good and right. 24 But be sure to fear the LORD and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you. 25 Yet if you persist in doing evil, both you and your king will perish.”

–1 Samuel 12.1-2b, 6-25 (NIV)

On the cover of one of the computer magazines to which I subscribe is this inscription: “How apps FIX everything!”

Really.

I must have missed them at the App Store, but I guess there are apps to fix poverty, hunger, injustice, and the massive suffering that exists in the world today. There must be apps to fix terminal illness and broken relationships. If apps can fix everything there must be apps that will fix the array of mental disorders that afflict some of us. I bet there are even apps that can fix our damaged relationship with God and the alienation and exile that our ongoing rebellion has caused. After reading the front cover of my magazine, I suddenly realized today that I am in the wrong business. I should have continued with my career as a technologist. At least then I would have had a shot at developing tools to fix everything in life that ails us.

Sarcasm (and the magazine’s editors’ hyperbole) aside, as today’s lesson makes clear, we humans have a long and checkered history of looking for almost anything (or anyone) else to solve our problems instead of looking to the One who really can fix everything for us and restore us to a truly peaceful and wholesome state of being. Don’t let the historical context of today’s lesson cause you to miss its point. When reading about God’s interactions with his called-out (holy) people, Israel, the people he chose through Abraham to bring healing and restoration to his broken and fallen world, we must always keep in mind that Israel had become part of the problem instead of part of God’s solution to address the problem of human sin and the host of problems that it causes.

We see this illustrated in today’s lesson. The writer of Samuel is not criticizing monarchy per se. Monarchy in Israel is no worse than, say, democracy would be if we keep in mind that God is our ultimate King and Ruler. The form of government is of little concern to the biblical writers, both in the OT and NT. What is important to the biblical writers is who people, especially God’s called-out people, really want running the show. As Samuel points out to his people, Israel’s sin is not wanting a king but rather in wanting to be like the people living around her, the very people God has called Israel to help him redeem! Israel is more interested in finding a human solution to the problems that beset them rather than acknowledging they are God’s people, and that God is big enough to handle any problem that Israel encounters.

This is especially grievous to God, considering all that he has done for his people, Israel. As God’s prophet (i.e., God’s human mouthpiece) points out to his people, God has a long and glorious history of delivering Israel from various forms of slavery and oppression. He did it in Egypt and he continued to do it once Israel settled in the promised land (cf. the book of Judges). And what was Israel’s response? They got fat and sassy and decided they didn’t need God to help them run their lives. They decided they could do it themselves. In other words, they decided they could play God and get away with it.

This is the essence of what the sin of human pride causes. We think we are big enough to play God–until life smacks us right in the teeth and reminds us otherwise.

Neither is this a problem for only God’s people. We should never read any of these kinds of passages in a prejudicial way. To the contrary, if Israel wasn’t God’s called-out and beloved people, God would likely not be spending so much of his time and energy on them. No, Israel’s problem of pride and self-reliance is our problem. It is humanity’s problem and it is universal.

We see it today in our own society, manifested in various ways. Here in the USA we scurry around and seek all kinds of different gods to help us take God’s rightful place as our Lord, Creator, and King. We pursue our individual freedoms and make them our god, and we can all see how well that is working out for this country. Some of us celebrate sexual disorders and promiscuity. Others advocate for the destruction of the traditional nuclear family. We continue to ignore and abuse each other, all in the name of personal freedom. We think that the more freedoms we have the happier we will be. But if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit this is just not true.

Others of us, like my technology magazine reminds us, make technology our god, hoping that it will ultimately solve all of our problems. Science and technology are indeed wonderful things and have made life much better, at least for people living in the West. We are living longer and healthier lives, for example. But the problem with technology is that it is amoral. It is only as good (or bad) as the people who use it. The same technologies that have brought wonderful advances in science, medicine, and education have also been used to bring us the atomic bomb, genocide, and the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

No, like Israel, until we acknowledge that God is God and we are not, and until we submit to his good and sovereign rule, we are never going to be able to fix ourselves, let alone the problems that bedevil us. Human solutions to the massive problems will ultimately be ineffective because we humans are so profoundly broken.

But there is hope, in no small part because we know that God’s rescue plan for his fallen creation and creatures involves human agency to a significant degree. We see this illustrated in God giving humans stewardship of his good creation, in sending his prophets to correct his wayward people Israel, and ultimately in Jesus of Nazareth to redeem God’s fallen people and creation. In Jesus, God has defeated evil decisively, although he has not brought evil’s defeat to its final conclusion. In Jesus’ resurrection, God has defeated our worst enemy, death, and has begun his wondrous and mighty act of New Creation, an act that will find its ultimate fulfillment when Jesus returns again in great power and glory to finish the work that he started and that only he is capable of finishing.

In the interim, God continues to call out his people in Christ to help him in his act of restoring his fallen and broken world and its people. We who follow Christ are called to bring his love to bear on those we encounter in our lives. None of us has the power to completely solve the massive problems that beset us. But we are not called to do that. Instead, we are called to use our God-given gifts–and with the Power and help of the Holy Spirit–to bring Christ’s healing and love to those around us who desperately need it. We are called to do that as individuals and collectively as Jesus’ people formed as his body, the Church. We may not agree with God’s plan or even understand it fully; that is where living and acting in faith come in. We are simply called to obey Jesus’ command to follow him and then have the confidence and humility to believe that he will use us in ways that he sees fit and are pleasing in his sight.

This is how God’s world gets fixed (and we get fixed in the process). God will return one day to bring about the final and ultimate rescue for his world. Until then, he calls us to love and obey him by taking up our cross each day, denying ourselves so that we can serve others, and following Jesus. We do this because we believe God has acted decisively on our behalf by becoming human and suffering and dying for us so that our alienation and exile from him can be ended permanently. We will not get to see the ultimate fruit of this wondrous gift until we are raised from the dead and given new resurrection bodies to live in God’s New Creation. It will be wonderful and glorious beyond our ability to really imagine.

In the meantime, however, there is work for us to do. We are to use our gifts and talents to bring Christ’s love to bear on others–always and only with the Spirit’s help, of course. It won’t be easy work and we will often meet heavy resistance because the powers and principalities don’t want to give up ruling the world. But they have already lost the war. God in Christ has assured us of that. Our job is to remain faithful to God and his call to us. We are to give up playing God and trying to elevate ourselves to his rightful place as sovereign and ruler of this universe.

All this requires a leap of faith on our part because in many cases what God calls us to do just doesn’t seem to make sense to us. But if we delve into God’s story and learn about his rescue plan for us, and if we align ourselves with other faithful Christians we are trying to be obedient to God just as we are trying to do, we don’t need to leap blindly into action. We will be reminded that we are serving a God who can raise us from the dead and call into existence things that are not. This, in turn, gives us hope for living and when we become God’s Kingdom workers in his world, we open ourselves up to be human to the fullest and to live our lives with power, meaning, and purpose.

If you haven’t given your life to Christ and in loving service to him by serving others, what are you waiting for? Your present and future are assured and you will discover what living the abundant life is really all about. It starts with losing yourself so that you can find the only True fix for all that ails you in this life.